In 1486, the dominant ecclesiastical authority published The Malleus Maleficarum (translated: The Witch Hammer). Written by two Dominican Priests, this infamous text claimed to be an authoritative guidebook that could be used to identify practitioners of witchcraft.

However, the book had more to do with snuffing out the Church’s competition than it did with recognizing witches. At the time, herbal healers had more success curing people with alternative methods than did the priests with highly stylized rituals. Under the pretext of delivering the world from evil, innovation and eccentricity were criminalized. The Malleus Maleficarum played no small role in the process.

Likewise, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) has served a similar function in the marginalizing and, on occasion, incarceration of potential innovators. Now printed in four editions, the DSM is “the billing bible for mental disorders which commingles neurological diseases with psychiatric diagnoses” (O Meara, no pagination). While The Malleus Maleficarum stigmatized certain modes of thought and behavior as “witchcraft,” the DSM stigmatizes them as “disorders.” In an interview with OMNI magazine, R.D. Laing expands on the role of the DSM in marginalizing divergent paradigms:

In the later sixties it became apparent to the elite with the responsibilities for “control of the population” that the old idea of putting people in the proverbial bin and keeping them there for life – warehousing people – wasn’t cost-effective. The Reagan administration in California was one of the first to realize this. So they had to rethink just what is said to the general public and what is practiced by the executive in control of mental health. The same problem prevails across Europe and the Third World.

To see what is happening, look at the textbook or manual called DSM-III: The Diagnostic Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders. Translated into economic and political terms, mental disorder means undesired mental states and behavior. The criteria for mental disorder in DSM-III include any unusual perceptual experience, magical thinking, clairvoyance, telepathy, sixth sense, sense of a person not actually present. You’re allowed to sense the presence of a dead relative for three weeks after their death. After that it becomes a criterion of mental disorder to have those feelings.

. . . these are not exceptional examples out of DSM-III. The overall drift is what contemporary modern psychiatry, epitomized by this DSM manual translated into eighteen languages, is imposing all over the world – a mandate to strip anyone of their civil liberties, of habeas corpus; and to apply involuntary incarceration, chemicalisation of a person, electric shocks, and non-injurious torture; to homogenize people who are out of line. Presented as a medical operation, it is an undercover.
(Liversidge 60-61)

Under the pretext of promoting mental health, the DSM has been instrumental in the stifling of cognitive dissent. Not only is the DSM analogous to The Malleus Maleficarum, but the respective historical periods of the two texts are analogous as well. Just as the dominant ecclesiastical establishment that promulgated The Malleus Maleficarum was premised on a form of mysticism, namely spiritualism, so is the contemporary religio-cultural milieu that adheres to the DSM. The new mysticism, however, is materialism. Daniel Pouzzner explains how materialism qualifies as a form of mysticism:

“The materialist is the mystic who believes in existence without consciousness, and preaches subordination to a vague and unaccountable ‘Society’ variously called ‘public interest,’ ‘the people,’ ‘world opinion,’ ‘the common good,’ etc. (Pouzzner, no pagination)”

This form of mysticism was introduced to the field of psychology by Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt. When examined closer, the imposition of this metaphysical doctrine upon psychology is most paradoxical. Psychology is derived from the word psyche, which meant “soul” in the original Greek. Ironically, however, Wundt would expunge the soul from the halls of psychological research and enshrine the primacy of matter. Appropriately, this metaphysical doctrine would underpin both communism and fascism. It also underpins the emergent police state of today.

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